Wednesday, 27 February 2013

Another entry in the file marked 'indie addiction dramas'. You might glean one or two semi-original, insightful observations from Smashed, but it is, otherwise, built solely upon offering Mary Elizabeth Winstead the kind of role she deserves. The joy of watching her elevate her material is somewhat lost, though, when her character is finally worthy of her standards, as Kate is. Still, she remains a compelling screen presence, with a good line in sapient understatement, and she devours her big Oscar scene whilst not losing sight of the character she's built. Much everything else in Smashed fades in comparison. James Ponsoldt nicely balances the dark subject matter with a light tone, and doesn't wrap his story up as neatly as you'd expect, given the flat simplicity with which he constructs some key themes and events earlier in the film. His levity can prove brash and distracting, though, and what he gives us in his aptitude with actors and with dialogue, he takes away with the derivative situations in which he sets them. He's not excessively ambitious - eventually, something of a relief, as the more low-key Ponsoldt keeps Smashed, the more successful it tends to be, and the more he allows Winstead to shine. There's little to be said for not having a unique voice in a cluttered independent film landscape, but there's surely something to be said for knowing not to end up trying too hard. All the same, he could try harder!

Sunday, 24 February 2013

On the eve of the Oscars, and at long last, here's the Screen on Screen Review of 2012.

The Top Ten Films of 2012

1. THE TURIN HORSE

Bela Tarr's final film, lest he should choose to retire from retirement, is bleak and claustrophobic, and brilliantly so. It's a slow burner, but the ultimate effect is one of extraordinary desolation. As accomplished a depiction of the world's end as has been made to this day.

2. KEEP THE LIGHTS ON

A film that will make you cry, and not because it wrings the tears out of your eyes. It draws you in, beguilingly, tenderly, honestly. The honesty in the central relationship is so palpable because Keep the Lights On is semi-autobiographical, and undoubtedly Ira Sachs' best work to date.

3. AMOUR

A chronicle of love. Hence the title. It is not about death - you know that's coming, after all, but it's not there yet. It is about life, and that is there in every frame, every line, every flicker of expression in the faces of Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, and what glorious expression.

4. LIFE OF PI

Dip your toe into Ang Lee's delicate yet overwhelming fantasy world, and you'll find that, before long, he's pulled you the whole way in. You're submerged, like Pi himself, but whereas he must watch the end of his life as he knows it, you may be watching the beginning of your own life, knowing it as you've never known it before.

5. TO THE WONDER

Take Terrence Malick's work at face value, and it is cold. But come up to his level, and read the imagery like you read a face, hear the sounds like you hear dialogue, and the richness of what he is communicating, and the way in which he is communicating it, is emblematic of the ultimate of what can be achieved through the art form that is cinema.

6. THE MASTER

So what does Paul Thomas Anderson know, anyway? As it turns out, not a lot. He asks questions he cannot answer. He leaves us with them, and embeds The Master in our own minds; in fact, it creeps into the cerebrum entirely, a sterile probe made of pure steel and steeliness. What do I know? The Master is one of the best films of the year.

7. ELENA

Elena is about Russia. Such a large country, with such a rich past, such an interesting future, such a complicated present. It is about money in Russia, class in Russia, gender in Russia, age in Russia. And in the hands of Andrei Zvyagintsev, it is all this in the form of a gripping thriller.

8. THE HUNT

You really feel this one. It stings. Thomas Vinterberg isn't out to sooth you. He's out to provoke you, infuriate you. Because these people are real, and these situations are real; they almost crack out of the screen, their force is so strong. Vinterberg isn't sorry that there are no happy endings. There is no happiness without pain.

9. HOLY MOTORS

It's just a film. Yes, of course you can read it as a commentary on what we watch, and how and why we watch it. Or you can read it as surrealist madness. Or you can choose to read it as nothing all. It's just a film. One way or another, I imagine you might raise a wry smile across Leos Carax's lips. Holy Motors did the same for me.

10. BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO

An exercise in style, and what an exercise in style. Peter Strickland turns everything up to eleven, but strips his mise en scene, both visually and aurally, strikingly bare. And all those elevens add up. Lap this one up, preferably alone, in a dark room, with your own sound studio turned up to eleven.

Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst. Not that Argo would be the best choice, but it's something of a foregone conclusion by now. There are four films in the running for Best Picture, though, despite what you may have heard.

Best Directing

Steven Spielberg
(Lincoln)

alt:
Ang Lee (Life of Pi)

These are the other two Best Picture contenders. And then there's Michael Haneke. And David O. Russell. And, fuck, Benh Zeitlin could win. And rub it square up the arse of Film Independent.

Best Actor in a Leading
Role

Daniel Day-Lewis
(Lincoln)

alt:
Hugh Jackman (Les Misérables)

I know, lol. Hugh Jackman! That's how certain Daniel Day-Lewis is to win. It's not even cool any more to see DDL win, it's just obvious. It's always gonna happen. You could make a fucking gif on your iphone of him taking a shit and he'd win an Oscar for it.

Best Actress in a Leading
Role

Emmanuelle Riva (Amour)

alt:
Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)

I don't see how they wouldn't give this to Emmanuelle Riva. Also, happy birthday, Emmanuelle. See? That woman, that performance, that film. JLaw is almost a quarter of her age. Riva is older than the Oscars themselves. If JLaw wins, I'll wake the fucking neighbourhood, I mean it.

Best Actor in a
Supporting Role

Robert De Niro (Silver
Linings Playbook)

alt:
Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)

Any one of the five nominees could win. In fact, the least likely is Philip Seymour Hoffman, and he won the Critics Choice. Tough shit, BFCA, how many did you match this year?!? Robert De Niro shoved a chilli up his bum and a raw onion up his nose to squeeze out two whole tears on Katie; ergo, he wins.

Best Actress in a
Supporting Role

Anne Hathaway (Les Misérables)

alt:
Sally Field (Lincoln)

The only person less shocked than me when Anne Hathaway wins this Oscar will be Anne Hathaway. But just you wait for the hand over the mouth, the raised eyebrows, the utter disbelief on her face! Now that's Oscar-worthy acting.

A haze seems to hover over So Yong Kim's For Ellen. It lends the locations an impermanence, and the events which take place in these locations. The muted colour palette, the slow pace, the mumbled dialogue - this is life as it is, not as it is fashioned to be in movies, to stimulate us. Joby Taylor is at a turning point, and facing down, or avoiding facing down, the result of several misplaced years, chasing a career as a rock star which only he is unable to discern is a fruitless endeavour. Kim maintains a subdued tone throughout, even as emotions come to the fore, or ought to come to the fore, at least by Hollywood standards. Because, in truth, life goes on, carrying us through even the most painful stretches, ticking away as steadily and as uncaringly as ever. The locations we inhabit do not change, and no-one around us knows, nor often cares, what we're going through. Joby has brought his sufferings on himself, and will continue to evade them until life changes him, as he cannot change his own life, not willingly. But Paul Dano summons up and out the heart of his despair, and enables us to appreciate that pain even when warranted is no less painful than when not. In the moment, it still hurts. The other cast members are equally impressive, including Jon Heder, displaying surprising versatility, and Shaylena Mandingo as Ellen, who never once appears to be acting. The ending is extremely derivative, but if the glove fits...

There is wonder in every frame of To the Wonder. This is no surprise, and nor is anything about Terrence Malick's latest film - it is quintessential Malick, which means it is abstruse, visually stunning, and extremely good. Watching it, you grasp just how gifted Malick is as both filmmaker and philosopher. He largely dispenses with conventional dialogue, favouring fragmented narration, and intricately detailed mise en scene, edits and soundscapes to intimate the deepest, most fundamental thoughts and emotions of his characters. The suggestion is that we are not lords of this earth, but a part of it. The beauty that can be found in music, in nature, in ourselves, both physically and cerebrally, is evinced here. We are informed by nature, and have the ability to inform it with our own natural gifts. In France, the architecture compliments the scenery; in America, where the people feel a desire to express themselves to the fullest, and through artificial means, it insults it, or destroys it. Marina and her daughter are stifled by this new life, this culture that is born out of a need to create active culture, rather than nurturing itself and allowing it to evolve organically. Neil accepts it, but unknowingly yearns for the spiritual, the intangible, the radiance that the women in his life all seem to possess. It is in Malick's storytelling, in the specific selections of score, the distinctive editing, the marvellous use of sound, the costumes, which turn to a flat, brutal light-swallowing black when their wearers lose their own internal light, and the usual exquisite photography, that he harbours his emotional intellect, and he coaxes greater meaning out of the human beings in his story than words - just another construct - could ever achieve. To see To the Wonder and to embrace it as Malick embraces us, like the melancholy priest played here by Javier Bardem, is to experience cinema at its most transcendent and sublime.

Thursday, 21 February 2013

Everything you already knew about conducting an affair in hotel rooms but were too afraid to try yourself. Don't worry, it looks pretty manageable from here. Marin Ireland and Chris Messina play a couple... well, there it is. They play a couple. Their relationship starts with sex, sure, but at least they know they'll always have that to fall back on. They keep meeting up for sex, and eventually forge a relationship out of their encounters. Their contact is depicted as being otherwise very limited, yet this relationship evolves like any other, with its peaks and troughs, highs and lows, good days and bad days. Having never participated in a long-term illicit affair in a variety of mid-range American hotel rooms, I'm no expert, but I'm of the opinion that such an unconventional love would be manifested in an unconventional way. There are moments of humour, emotional tension, nudity, all a mixed bag of mild flavours, none ever quite taking hold, resulting in a film that plays everything much too safe. Writer-director Matt Ross has assembled elements of other alternative indie love stories and smoothed out their creases, stitching them together with a structural device that is pitched as a quirk, but ends up as only a frustration. Ireland and Messina hit nary a false note between them, but with material so unchallenging, it'd be a shock if they did.

Tuesday, 19 February 2013

A spirited account of Chile's escape from the clutches of dictatorship in 1988, Pablo Larrain's No makes up for its lack of innovation with its brio and sense of humour, partially at least. It almost approaches docudrama territory with the frequent footage of the ad campaigns run by opposing sides in the plebiscite, and this footage is the most revealing and entertaining aspect of No. Production details are excellent in their evocation of the era, and the faux-authentic filming style is only occasionally tacky, and mostly successful. Larrain achieves a feeling of immediacy throughout, keeping the flow of scenes brisk, the camera close and intimate, the performances bright and natural. It's somewhat sloppy, though, and both verbose enough that you'll need to pay constant attention, yet often lacking in clarity, or even pertinence - many characters barely register, and their petty squabbles add neither humour nor dramatic depth. Larrain adds a jolt of tension every now and then, but to little avail; it's always short-lived, and ultimately only clutters the tone of the film. All of this is why the contemporary ad footage is so much more interesting - it has been created with purpose, a greater purpose than No can aspire to today, and one which it has its sights firmly set on. Larrain is generous with his use of it, though, which is welcome, and also necessary, considering its centrality to the story. No is, then, an appealing but slightly frustrating and unsatisfying film, generally well-executed but a tad unmemorable.

This is a deceitful film. The filmmakers aren't being frank with their audience. They want us to believe that this is a story of a wealthy, ill, elderly Australian woman whose two grown children have flown in from Europe to bear with her as she approaches her end. And this is, indeed, what happens in The Eye of the Storm. But, in fact, this is a story of a great (or, perhaps, rather small) folly, an attempt to create a grand, monumental work of cinematic art, a project of immense and wholly misplaced ambition. Mere moments in, the central characters are revealed to be vapid, crass regurgitations of literary tropes (this is an adaptation of a novel), their dialogue so mannered that it surely can't be the produce of spontaneous thought - it must be the produce of hours of consideration, and a most thorough perusal of a thesaurus. These people can only be interpreted as actors, and watching actors play actors is rarely pleasant, lest the film be a comedy; The Eye of the Storm is not a comedy, because timeless masterpieces can never be comedies. Dreary scene after dreary scene lolls on screen until the credits appear, and no profound insight into the human condition has been offered up, no significant emotional course has been undertaken - we're still where we started, resenting these tired, affected figures and every word they so precisely articulate. Judy Davis has been playing this role for years, so if you're a fan, you ought to watch anything else of hers; Charlotte Rampling still has a charming youthfulness about her, and tries her best, but this material is beyond even the best of the best performers. I suppose that was the intention - not even actors these great are worthy of such fine writing! A slog from first to last.

The theory is that the statistics go in one ear and out the other, but that the natural beauty of our Earth is unforgettable. The statistics still pack a punch, though, for me at least, since there are clearly enough facts and figures which we aren't aware of. You drill deeper into this, you only seem to find more and more evidence. I thought it, and then the film stated it: why are we still arguing? Surely if there is a small chance that we are causing irreparable damage to this planet, we ought to do all that we can to try to put it right? This rotten tooth isn't going to heal itself. Perhaps, as blocks of ice as big as a small country calve off into the sea, and few more magnificent spectacles of such awesome devastation you're likely to ever see, you'll feel as I did - how could we have done this to our planet? We are wholly, entirely, unquestionably 100% reliant on it, and yet we abuse it so badly. This is bad news, on an unfathomably large scale, and it's old news. The natural beauty gives way to horror, as ice gives way to water, and Chasing Ice ends on a reflective, elegiac note in its credit sequence, thoroughly worth sitting through, as all those in attendance at my screening did. More of this beauty, or the horror, or even the statistics would have bolstered the film, though, since these truly are unforgettable, whereas the film's human subject, James Balog, is not.

Saturday, 16 February 2013

We human beings are possessed of two important features which set us apart from all other species. One is an advanced intelligence, a capacity to consider many conflicting points of view and to make judgements thusly, to think laterally. The other is money. One is a progressive feature, the other regressive. Money creates a hierarchical social system which few have the nerve to challenge, and in so doing, exposes our greed, envy, sloth, and cowardly acceptance of the superiority of others who, we can identify, have little meaningful claim to superiority over anyone. It is easy to ward off emotions such as sympathy when one witnesses the privileged fall on hard times; Lauren Greenfield lays it on thick with her documentary, and began to erode my wall of stoic indifference to the plight of the filthy rich Siegel family, until they gave me another reason to deem them worthy of their misfortunes, dispensed to them by the recession. So you're compelled to spend this money? You literally cannot resist? I know the feeling - every time I see a neon pink leopard print tracksuit, I just have to have it. Bitch please, you have no such compulsion. This 'Queen', Jacqui Siegel, is a misguided soul, really, not a bad person. She was guided away from her own intelligence, married a man more than 30 years her senior and had seven children, who know their nannies better than they know her. She's a fascinating character, but not an infuriating one in whose company to spend time. The same can't be said of her bilious bully of a husband, nor his almost equally toxic son - there's a segment, early on, focusing on the son and the family business which felt like a glimpse into the devil's daydreams, and I figured that I might not be able to endure a whole film of this. Luckily, though, the Siegels soon get what they deserve. The stock market drops, and so do their smiles. Every cloud, right?

Thursday, 14 February 2013

Horror film as social commentary, or is it the other way around? Either way, one gets in the other's, and Brandon Cronenberg overcooks his slick new-Millennium update of the kind of low-budget 'body horror' films his father made in the 70s and 80s. Visually, none of the seams are showing, but thematically, Antiviral is haggard, consisting of one simple, trite observation made incessantly and ham-fistedly. It's a premise worthy of the most pretentious student film, glossed up by sexy, stark imagery worthy of a high-grade commercial. What a startling dichotomy. It's not necessarily that Cronenberg needed to explore greater psychological depths - if anything, it's the opposite. As an insidious little horror, Antiviral is quite satisfying, and Cronenberg's love of all things red and runny produces many memorable moments. He could have gone a little further - it leads to less than it ought to, save one deliciously disquieting burst of eroticism, Cronenberg-style. An increasingly fraught Caleb Landry Jones sulks his way through endless scenes of illness and desperation, which reach the point of tedium, but Jones' dedication to the role is impressive. The camera rarely leaves him - that same tunnel vision that Brandon's father employs, only to more characteristic effect, understandably, and Brandon is unable to either mimic this effect or to create one of his own. Sarah Gadon is miscast as megastar Hannah Geist, and the film's inability to convincingly distill the cult of celebrity in the modern era is centered upon her and her character.

Tuesday, 12 February 2013

A blinkered view of immediate post-war Germany, blinkered because it is seen from the perspective of a teenage girl, and she has other things on her mind. Maybe there have been enough stories about the war, but there have certainly been enough stories about adolescent women coming of age, which Lore's director Cate Shortland surely ought to know. It's a smart and appropriate decision to set Lore's view of the world askew, and closed to the naked truth staring Germany down as it recovers from its heady, horrible days of hope and death under Nazi rule, but a tad more insight might have lent this film a tad more colour. A tad more bite would've helped too - Shortland kicks subtly but markedly into action in the final minute or so, like a shot of pure alcohol after two hours of murky water. Lore, a teenager in charge of her younger siblings as they journey across a country that is no longer their own, becomes many things over the course of the film - a mother to her brothers and sister, a grown, or growing, woman, emotionally and sexually, and gradually aware of many things. Alas, so familiar is this tale to audiences that the unique setting does little to distinguish this film from many others - we can forecast Lore's thoughts and actions before she knows she's even capable of them, and Shortland springs no surprises on us. Lore is just another teen, who thinks she's going through what no-one before her has ever gone through; she is, but not in the same way. The woman she emerges as is the stronger, more interesting character, even if she barely has time to peek her head above the surface before the closing credits roll. The score and photography are as tastefully bland as they are hypnotic, and Saskia Rosendahl is memorable in the lead role.